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News & Views

News & Views is published monthly by 180 Systems. Our objective is to provide recent articles to our readers on business technology topics. In some cases, our blog contains a title with a hyperlink to a source article, a quote from the article and our comments. In other cases, we have provided a blog without a hyperlink for original content by 180 Systems. We encourage you to post your own comments. You can also access our blog by topic.

Pat Wade

I am delighted to announce that Pat Wade has joined 180 Systems. Pat’s primary role is to coach our clients through their system implementation. Pat has 20+ years of experience to draw upon and our clients have already found her assistance invaluable. Pat is also assisting in the selection process through demonstrations and contract negotiation. Her previous experience on the other side of the table (as the vendor) gives her insight that few people can offer and that our clients also find invaluable.

Prior to 180 Systems, Pat was President of Equation Technologies which implemented hardware, networks and software to support their client’s financial and operational requirements. In 2001, in order to provide more focused expertise to clients, Equation limited its products and service offering to packaged and custom ERP software applications – financial, supply chain, professional services, warehouse management, and human resources. Pat’s firm grew to 25 employees and was recognized by the Accounting Technology magazine as one of the “Top 100 Pacesetters” in North America. Throughout the years, Pat and her team have delivered hundreds of successful implementations. In late 2012, Equation Technologies merged with BAASS Business Solutions and Pat joined the firm as a Vice President. Pat has been in transition the last few months as she wound down her responsibilities at BAASS but she has already made a huge positive impact at 180 Systems.

January 1, 2015 from CPA Magazine by Michael Burns – “We all hear the bad news when a vendor is sued over a failed implementation. When this happens, we assume there are many other unhappy customers whose experiences do not get broadcast, because most companies would rather not litigate. But are there also many happy customers? And what makes a happy customer? We have a created an online survey to determine just how successful — or unsuccessful — technology investments turn out to be…”

180 View – The survey which can be found by clicking here is for ERP, CRM and BI. Questions will include which industry, company size, system, type of system, costs of system (by license, implementation, hosting fees, maintenance and support, and internal costs), satisfaction with implementation, satisfaction with benefits and lessons learned. The goal is to determine the satisfaction of these investments and to see whether there is a correlation to industry, company size, the system or type of system. Stay tuned.

November 10. 2014 from LinkedIn – “…Why is it that so many ERP implementations go so wrong? In my current role I meet regularly with ERP survivors and casualties. My best but unscientific estimate is that 90-95% of them have horror stories to share…”

180 View – There is a big difference between a horror story and bumps in the road. We would agree that there always bumps in the road. What you need is someone on your team that knows how to adapt or a coach to get you through it – someone like Pat Wade from 180 Systems who has managed ERP implementations for over 20 years. Pat can be reached at pwade@180systems.com or at (416) 560-0591.

December 16, 2014 from IndustryWeek – “I sometimes find it difficult to describe what I do to friends and acquaintances who have careers outside of manufacturing and rarely give much thought to how things actually get made. To the uninitiated, if I were to say “I help manufacturers to implement continuous improvement (CI) models” or “I support companies in their production system journey,” I might as well be speaking a foreign language because, while these statements resonate with those of us who live and breathe CI every day, they don’t mean much to the rest of the world…”

180 View – We start all our projects with a kick-off meeting and there are other similarities to the NFL analogy. The article discusses the importance of “What does the business require of this operation to be successful” which we call the Critical Success Factors. We use it to identify functional requirements that will enable attainment of CSFs and also to identify the important metrics or KPIs. The article also discusses comparing metrics to the perfect or ideal standard. This is what we call the goal KPI and how we recommend determining whether a particular investment was worthwhile.